


Inquietude

by FairlyLorely



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Internal Monologue, M/M, Major Character Injury, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-03-08 13:49:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18895870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairlyLorely/pseuds/FairlyLorely
Summary: What if Max had accidentally hurt Billy with that bat?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There is a saying in my language which roughly translates to this: Words are like arrows from a quiver. Once they go off flying, there's no stopping them, or bringing them back.  
> Fake news.  
> You can retrieve those arrows. But if they find their mark, the target carries the scar on their assault forever.  
> I don't think Max was in the wrong. Billy had it coming. It could just have ended very badly for everyone involved, as it does in real life. I have a concaved spot on my leg from fifteen years ago which will attest to this. Someone did something, and basically, it ended with a literal chunk of flesh being ripped off my leg. The human body is fragile. Only swing that baseball bat with wild abandon when demogorgons are meeting the other end of it.  
> I might turn this into a series that explores Billy's recovery, with a proper romantic Harringrove arc.

Ever heard an unfettered howl? The kind that grows from grief and is sustained by the palliative quality of pain. You keep screaming because it blocks some of those pain impulses from reaching the brain, and you only stop screaming when the hoarseness of your throat screams out its own anguish with the taste of iron at the back of your mouth and a sense of void where breath should be.

A crescendo that never falls and fades. Just mutes abruptly.

Billy stopped screaming.

Steve had felt this oppressive, demanding silence beating against his eardrums when Nancy, blood thinned and lips loose, had revealed what she thought of him. How little she thought of him. It had hurt worse because he'd seen it coming. Nancy Wheeler had always been out of his league and he'd depended on her not knowing this truth to make their relationship work. But like always, she knew better.

The silence had deafened him when he'd learnt of Barbara's fate. Accompanied by a dizzying kaleidoscope of every missed, murdered moment where he could have averted this fate, it renditioned in every moment of calm he tried to steal from his now upside down life.

"Put the bat down, Max."

Lucas had looked scared when Billy had him hoisted up against the wall. Right now, he looked confused, agitated. Like finally, his two-tone, nascent understanding of morality had hit a roadblock.

The gang's usual panicked chatter in the face of all things strange and dangerous had fizzled out. They had nothing to say. This wasn't a problem they could solve with a makeshift tent in the Wheeler's basement, or the unforgiving swing of a weapon.

Billy was bleeding out sluggishly. The front of his trousers was growing wetter, the dark stain spreading.

Steve couldn't help a neurotic giggle at the sight. If he could only see in black and white, if he couldn't smell the blood in the air, he could have pretended that Billy was just lying there after an attempt at breaking his own keg record, lights out, pissing his pants. But the punches to the face and plate to the skull hadn't scattered Steve's senses that far apart. Billy was bleeding out.

Steve made his way over to Max's side, which brought him right above Billy's prone form. Without a glance down, he gently dislodged the weapon from Max's grip.

"Call your parents, Max."

This seemed to shock her into awareness. She wheeled around to face him, anchoring herself to him with fisted fingers in his shirt.

"No! They can't know!"

Steve closed his eyes, wishing for time to rewind just ten minutes. After all, stranger things had already happened tonight.

When he opened his eyes again, Lucas had pried Max away to a corner.

Steve caught snippets of the conversation.

"We have a world to save, Max. Without Hop, we can't drive him to the hospital ourselves or we'll be spending the night being questioned by the police, and by the time our parents show up to bail us out, not only will they know everything, Billy would probably be dead, along with half of Hawkins, so just please, call your mom."

Max's eyes were darting around like she was looking for an escape route, but her feet remained planted. She knew how to stand her ground. Billy had taught her well.

Pale, shaking, but voice sure, she said, "Last time Billy fractured his wrist, my step-father told him he deserved it for being a limp-wristed blight on the family reputation. Mom didn't help either. She just made me go to my room. Billy sat on the porch until the neighbours finally decided to come over and check on us. They took him to the emergency room. So, please, listen to me. We can't..."

She opened her mouth to say more but choked on a sob.

Steve's instinct was to comfort her, but he stayed put. He was afraid if he put his hand on her shoulder with the intent to offer a kind word, he'd just end up shaking her. The churning mess of ruth and temper was threatening to spill out like nausea of ill-thought-out words and actions.

"Billy made me promise never to talk to my parents about him, or his friends, or his whereabouts, or his problems. Ever. He made me promise," Max sounded like a child reciting a well-practiced lesson.

These were all children, and they were terrified.

"Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is," Steve's mother always told him. Dare to do, she meant. Dare to be, she meant, and reach beyond fear.

But Steve knew better. The wolf was bigger than whatever you'd imagined. It's face split open and it lunged at you with thrice the cautioned number of rows of teeth. The wolf stayed hot on your heels and bit and bit and bit. You either dodged, running until your feet gave up, or you lunged right back. You bashed that wolf's face in until no one could possibly make out what it'd once been, face now perpetually split open, its teeth scattered on the squelching soil.

Then you went home. You tracked blood, and dirt, and grime along with the heavy weight of your costly victory, and the picture you made that day became your new reality.

Next time some pup nipped at your heels or a scared dog gave chase to warn you off of its territory, you lunged, and as you did, your human skin melted away to reveal the wolf underneath.

Fear doesn't allow you to overcome it. Once you come into contact, it infects you.

"It's okay, Max. It's going to be okay. All of you, just wait outside."

"But Steve...," Dustin began, but Steve silenced him with a stern look.

"Please, just trust me. Go wait outside."

The kids departed, the relief shining through their token reluctance at someone else taking charge.

Steve dialed a familiar number.

"Hello?"

"I need you to drive out to the Byer's place. You know where it is?"

"Everyone in town knows where that freak lives, Harrington. You need someone to spy on him and Miss Perfect, get one of those little nerds that follow you around to do it. I'm not at your beck and call anymore, King Steve."

"Please, Tommy. I know you're pissed at me, but please, I'm begging you. Just come over." 

If Steve knew Tommy H. at all, what years of friendship couldn't do, his curiosity would accomplish. Tommy would come.

"Fine. Give me fifteen."


	2. Dead Mice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You bit his dick off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to come back to this later in the day to edit. If I don't post right away, I end up deleting everything. :( So, tada. I've written this in a different voice, like how I feel Steve's inner monologue would be like. It's first person POV; I'm the only literature enthusiast that seems to prefer it. Let me know if that ruins the experience for you. I'll experiment with different styles anyway.

“You bit his dick off.”

The plate must have knocked something loose in my head. That was the only explanation for why I had decided to call Tommy.

I could very well have drive Hargrove to some random clinic and dumped him by the entrance.

Except I was not in the right mindset to execute a ring-the-bell-and-run. That move required speed, finesse, machismo, none of which I possessed.

As Tommy panicked, he began making even lesser sense. It was like his confusion was transfused into his words and the air the sound waves travelled through. By the time they reached my ears, they were corrupted. Two-way encrypted communication, but I never learnt the code. This was not the first time I’d felt left out of the knowledge of patterns and sense that people seemed to take for granted. They took in words letter by letter, but with art, they never bothered with every stroke. I struggled to tell between letters, and strokes, and word, and art. Sometimes, it made me feel stupid. But much more often, it made me feel alien. Like I was built wrong, but the parts of me that needed replacing were too deep inside to fix or polish or even examine without knocking other vitals out of place. So, I tried to look for people that were like me, broken somewhere on the inside, but striking and enduring. With no understanding of how I worked, all there was left to do was follow suit.

 “What the fuck, Tommy!”

“Always knew you were a cocksucker, Harrington! But this is overzealous, even by your Nancy-chasing pansy standards.”

“Are you done being a fucking comedian? I called you to help.”

“I am not helping you hide a body, you freak. We were never that good of friends.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

I couldn’t focus. Tommy’s voice was too loud. Loud enough that I wouldn’t hear the minacious beat of paws as they ate up the distance. Not until the run culminated in young voices screaming bloody, inevitable, untimely murder. The unfairness of the situation was pricking behind my eyes, benevolent in giving me a clear choice, it could either stay and grow and strangle my every nerve ending with an impressive headache, or it could wrack out, eyes flooding, nose flowing, mouth hiccupping. I was trapped in a nightmare. Barb was dead. Nancy had dumped me. Dogs were no longer good boys; they, in fact, ate good and bad boys alike. These monsters chased away every monster lurking in my consciousness with their cogent terror. There was no room for doubt, or anxiety, or shame. There was no reason to chase peace. It was time to be on the run, the time of fuel and flamethrowers, axes, bats, and pistols. But just as I was losing himself to the unsubtle death-or-glory game, as it is won’t to do to keep the player on its toes, the game changed. I came fists swinging at the monster of the hour, and turns out, Billy Hargrove is human after all.

“Jesus. Fine, asshole. Help me get him in the car,” said Tommy, calmer now, either because his panic had reached its edge or because he’d followed Steve’s lead. Old habits die hard, after all.

I walked around to Billy’s head, avoiding stepping on the growing dark puddle. Were thigh wounds supposed to bleed this much? Was it wishful thinking that Max had only nicked his thigh?

We carried him out. His head lolled limply against my stomach. I kept my eyes facing forward.

“You got him?”

I nodded at Tommy as he set Billy’s feet down. I brought my hands from under his shoulders to wind around his chest and hoisted him up to hold his body against mine. Setting him down on the cold ground didn’t feel right. I was afraid that as the soil tasted his blood, greedy for more, it would treacherously steal away his fragile warmth.

His heart was beating against the pulse of my wrist. It was slow, and in response to its weakness, mine rose to a peak.

He was going to be okay. He had to be. Flower-faced canine fuckers, I might one day get over. But a little girl scared into murdering her own brother for my sake, now that would drive me off the deep end and keep me submerged until every single cell in my body bloated and rotted in the wet beyond recognition.

“I’m not coming with you, Tommy.”

From the resigned sigh, I knew he’d seen this coming.

“I’m not going to ask you any questions now, because you’re an inarticulate moron at the best of times. Right now, with you practically pissing your pants, you’ll only waste my time. So, go fuck off to wherever you need to be.”

I hadn’t called Tommy because Billy had knocked the remaining sense out of me, but because seeing him lying there had jump-started a part of my brain that had been on hiatus. The part that knew Tommy. The part that was self-aware.

Tommy was my friend because we were both assholes. In fact, it was our cruel wallying that had brought us together once upon a time.

I remembered Mrs Collins, my next-door neighbour.

We used to leave dead mice outside her door. See, the joke there was that she looked mousey, with her ashy brown hair, rotund figure, and scurrying walk. We’d found her gait funny even after we learnt the story behind it. A tumble from her first-floor balcony had busted her kneecap for good. All she could do now was drag her feet, and this seemed to be a perfect metaphor for the rest of her life. She was dragging herself along somehow. No social circle, no family to speak of, not even pets. She was only alive as a spectacle, a regular feature in the Hawkins gossip-mill.

Her husband, courtesy of whom the tumble had happened, had made it like the wind, except he was a moron that kept swiping plastic at gas stations, and the wind was soon taken out of his sails. He was in jail now.

Mrs Collins was in a jail of her own. She remained the Mrs Collins to the incarcerated Mr Collins.

Maybe there were mice in Mr Collins jail cell; their facsimile in her life were us kids. Who was to say which of the two had gotten a better deal

She never caught us in the act. Only saw us running away.

God, we were assholes.

“I only want to ensure young Steven learns to build healthy relationships with neighbours, you see.”

And my mom had seen. She’d seen Mrs Collins right out the door. Couldn’t be seen associating with a convict’s wife, after all.

Was assholery genetic? Was everyone in the world an asshole?

Who cares what everyone in the world is like? Certainly not two uncaring assholes like Tommy and I.

When it came time to choose between fight and flight, we always chose to flip the bird’s flight until it crashed right out of the sky. We fought with abandon and without sense, until our fists made contact with something, anything. If someone struck back, we sat, dumbstruck, contemplating the idea of other wayward fists flying about and what that meant for the being and well-being of our own knuckles. The opponent usually got fed up of the time-out and left. It was a good system. In these moments of solaced defeat, as we stilled, we weren’t assholes. Our brains were too occupied. This had been one such time-period for Tommy, and it had stretched from the time I had stopped calling him to today, when I had finally called. In some part of my pattern-illiterate, alien, brain, when Billy had struck me, he’d struck a chord and it had reverberated until I found myself standing, hearing loud and clear, the patient, expectant ringing of the phone's dial tune as I waited for Tommy to pick up.

“You better call as soon as you’re done, Steve. I’m not explaining this to the cops.”

“Don’t worry, Tommy. The Chief will sort everything out by tomorrow morning. Trust me. Just get him help.”

As I drove off with the kids, I spared one last glance at Tommy’s taillights disappearing. I had to make it tomorrow morning. How else would I check up on Hargrove?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, I'm pretty damn lonely, so come say hello to me on Instagram, if you'd like. Follow, like, DM, or whatever it is people do on there. I'm new to social media. A born again virgin. I deleted all my accounts after high school, but back with a well, not a bang, but back, nonetheless, and hoping to meet chill people that like to chill online. Analog world (that's what I call the real world instead of calling the cyber space the virtual world because fuck it, that's why) friends just want to go places, like cabs, and tickets don't cost money at all. But I wanna talk, and exchange memes and poetry! So yeah, insta account.  
> My handle is fictitious dot riti, with the real dot (.), no spaces. Not typing it as it is in case I decide to write smut here. 8)


End file.
